


Aurora is the effort

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Doctors & Physicians, Dreams, Exhaustion, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8102413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Will Mary listen?





	

“Go back to bed, Mary,” Jed declared, striving for his most Executive Officer tone, in hopes that she would simply acquiesce. 

She looked exhausted, had been up most of the night with a desperately ill corporal from New York who needed everything, it seemed, to stay alive; he wondered that Mary had not had to draw the breath in and out of the man’s lungs as if she wound a skein of wool. There had not been much for Jed to do and she’d sent him off to bed near nine o’clock and now he wondered if she’d been to bed at all. Her hair was mussed, but not by a pillow, and the shadows beneath her dark eyes suggested she had broken the night’s back through sheer strength of will. Had she always been thus or was this indomitable spirit created by the War’s crucible? He knew so little of her past and there was not much opportunity to sit idle, watching the fire in the hearth, reflecting on other times, other places, wheedling one more story, one more memory. 

“I just need a moment, that’s all,” she said. 

Her voice was husky, the hours of cajoling Corporal Dawson to drink something, take something, hold on a few more minutes and then just a few more all evident, the lack of care she’d taken for her self less noticeable save that he studied her daily. He found a tumbler, poured some water in it from the pitcher at hand and hoped it was fresh enough, pushing it towards her wordlessly; she drank it down without comment but when she replaced the glass, she misjudged and there was a sharp sound as it nearly tipped, her gasp for the startle of the fall or the way his hand touched hers as they both tried to right it. His fingers curled around hers before he had the thought to do it and she was too slow from her fatigue to draw back immediately or perhaps she wanted the comfort.

“Mary, for Christ’s sake, you’re nearly asleep. We’ll get by a few hours without you, the place won’t come crashing down. I’ll make sure Dawson is looked after. Sister Mary Helen’s a fine nurse and not too cowed by Nurse Hastings, she’ll do,” he tried, letting himself speak to her as Jedediah only, the way they did when they were alone in the officers’ lounge or they found each other on the veranda, breathing in the scent of the garden, Alexandria’s petrichor unfamiliar to both of them, even the stinging fumes of the laundresses, anything other than blood, new, old, caked, clotted. It was not the way he would have spoken to her if she had been sitting at her dressing table, combing out her hair before braiding it in a loose plait for the night or if she were fussing with his uniform in its press, even eagerly turning the pages of _The Woman in White_ propped up by pillows, the sleeve of her nightdress slipped from her shoulder, the arc of her clavicle irresistibly erotic.

“Please, my—Mary, rest a little. You’ve told me so, often enough, and I’ve listened,” he said. She drew her hand back and looked at him, those beautiful dark eyes tired, but not so much that she couldn’t make out his expression.

“Yes, well, that is a matter of some controversy, how well you’ve ever listened, and to me…but I will listen to you now, I’ll go lie down. But you must send one of the nuns to wake me in a few hours, by noon at the latest,” she replied, her amusement mixed with the strain of the night, some softness he fancied she kept just for him.

“Yes, of course, I’ll send someone. Off with you now, go dream of Boston, all that tea dumped in the harbor, or those cobbled walks, Abolitionists running amok,” he said, grinning at the end at what he said, at her reflected smile, his intention. 

He imagined her in her bed as the morning wore on, stealing back the night, wishing he might wake her himself, sitting on the edge of the thin mattress, a hand stroking her cheek or kissing that pretty mouth, resigned that it would have to be a nun who went in his place.

“I’ve my own dreams,” she said, adding, “I shan’t tell you, otherwise they mayn’t come true.” 

She rose from her chair and walked by him, letting her skirt graze his leg, her hand brushing his forearm where he already had his sleeve rolled up, touching the air right beside his cheek, the arrested approach of a caress he longed for, and giving him such a look, half coquette, half naïf, the Mary he wanted to see regarding him from rumpled bed linens, the bed itself still warm beneath him, everything revealed.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a drabble of sorts where Jed tells Mary to go back to bed-- I used the title (from Emily Dickinson) as the prompt. The Woman in White was written by Wilkie Collins in 1859 and is considered to be the first real mystery novel.


End file.
